France

Recognised as being of public utility, FACE Foundation (Fondation Agir Contre l’Exclusion) supports a network of local foundations across France that address social challenges at the local level. It facilitates collaboration between businesses, civil society, and local stakeholders, thereby enabling the implementation of locally rooted initiatives in areas such as employment, education, a socially responsible ecological transition, and inclusion in the broadest sense. Through its role as a legal and administrative umbrella organisation, FACE shares its legal personality and its network of local associations, and provides a common framework, mobilises resources, and supports the development of community-based foundations. In this way, the FACE Foundation helps strengthen community philanthropy and collaborative action at the local level.

Established in 1969 Fondation de France acts in many ways like a national community foundation. In particular it plays a role in stimulating philanthropy and in hosting donor advised and community foundations.

The French Foundation Centre (CFF) was established in 2002. Its mission is to support and develop endowment funds and foundations in France through different actions including advocacy, seminars, publications, and field trips. CFF has pioneered the transposition of the community foundation concept in France through workshops since 2008 and a publication in 2013, interpreting “community” in a geographical way, more appropriate to the French culture and reality. Community foundation is not a legal status in France, but a way of acting with and for a territory.

The current development of community foundations is dynamic throughout the country. There is a wide interest by public institutions like municipalities due to shrinking public subventions. This launched a debate on how, in this context, the concept of community foundations should be developed as a private tool that is independent of politics.

The Lille Foundation was the first territorial foundation created in France. It is active in a wide range of fields, fighting inequality, promoting a fair ecological transition and encouraging dialogue between cultures and regions. A place of trust and neutrality, it works with all the players in the area to meet identified needs. Also, with a role as a sheltering foundation, it has been experimenting with sheltering of territorial/community foundations since 2018.

In 2008, the Lille Fondation inspired the Centre Français des Fonds et Fondations (CFF) to study community foundations and actively participated in this work. In 2021, the Lille Foundation resumed work on community foundations in partnership with the Fondation des Territorires and the research laboratory Le RAMEAU. Since 2022, the Lille Foundation has been part of a European initiative called “Citizen to Citizen: Promoting Civic Engagement and Participation through Community Foundations in Europe”. This explorative initiative is carried out in partnership with ECFI and AEF (Association of Spanish Foundations). It focuses on the development of community foundations and their support networks in France, Spain and Portugal, and involves other countries where the community foundation field is emerging. In 2023 the Lille Fondation created the first French network of Territorial Foundations, which brings together around fifteen community foundations in France.